EASIE JBoss Plugin Installation

JBoss Server Development With Eclipse

Genuitec, L.L.C.
March, 2002

This article introduces practical J2EE server-side development techniques using Eclipse
with JBoss Server 2.4.4 integrated with Tomcat 4.0.1 (JBoss). We’ll demonstrate how to
install, configure, and run the EASIE JBoss Plugin for Eclipse in preparation to
performing J2EE server-side development. Additionally, use of this plugin with JBoss 3.0
Alpha and Beta will also be discussed.

Introduction
Genuitec recently released the EASIE JBoss Plugin. It is the second in a series of application and
web server plugins for the Eclipse 2.0 IDE. This product extends the Eclipse IDE to include user
controls for managing a JBoss instance from within Eclipse runtime and debug contexts. The
plugin is built on top of Genuitec’s Eclipse Application Server Integration Environment, (EASIE™),
a framework for interfacing Eclipse with Java/J2EE application servers. In this article, we
demonstrate how to install, configure, and run the EASIE JBoss Plugin for Eclipse.

Getting Started – The Software Environment

The following software environment was used as the basis for this article. For similar results, it is
highly recommended that you use the same or later versions of all listed software. When defining
directory paths remember to compensate for differences between the environment presented in
this article and your development environment.

Software Version
Java JDK Sun JDK 1.4 rc 0 or greater
JBoss Server Version 2.4.4 with Tomcat Integration
Version 3.0 Alpha/Beta with Tomcat
Integration
Eclipse IDE Version 2.0 (pre-release) Build 20020125

EASIE JBoss Plugin Installation

Download the latest EASIE JBoss Plugin from Genuitec. The plugin is distributed in ZIP format,
therefore, using your ZIP file utility, unzip the EASIEJBoss.zip file into the <Eclipse_Home>
directory. This will create a new plugin directory named
com.genuitec.eclipse.easie.jboss.

Copyright © 2002, Genuitec, LLC

Step-1, Enable the EASIE JBoss Plugin
Once the plugin has been installed it must be activated. From the main menu navigate to
‘Perspective > Customize…’, expand the ‘Other’ node on Available Action Sets and
select ‘EASIE JBoss’.

Figure 1

Select ‘OK’ to activate the plugin. When activated, the plugin installs a JBoss menu to the
Eclipse menubar and UML node-based start and stop icons to the Eclipse toolbar.

Figure 2

Copyright © 2002, Genuitec, LLC

 Step-2, JBoss Plugin Configuration
With the JBoss Plugin activated, it must be configured before attempting to start JBoss. Select
the Workbench > Preferences and choose the JBoss node to view and edit the plugin
properties.

Figure 3

JBoss Plugin Property Summary

Property Default Value Required Description
Path to JBoss home directory. This is
JBoss Home
Yes the directory named jboss directly
Directory
containing the bin directory.
XML Document org.apache.crimson.jaxp. Path to XML builder factory class
Yes
Builder Factory Class DocumentBuilderFactoryImpl
SAX Parser Factory org.apache.crimson.jaxp. The name of the SAX parser factory
Yes
Class SAXParserFactoryImpl class
Additional commandline arguments to
JVM Arguments No be passed to the JVM when launching
JBoss.
Program arguments passed to JBoss.
For version 2.4.4 this is often the
Optional Program configuration name as shown. For
No
Arguments version 3.0, the configuration name
can be set by using
-c <configurationname>.

Please consult the resources at the end of this article for a comprehensive description of each
configuration property.

Copyright © 2002, Genuitec, LLC

Starting JBoss
Once the JBoss Plugin has been configured, you should be able to start it from either the JBoss
> Start JBoss menu or the green UML node icon on the toolbar. Selecting either start
option causes the JBoss Plugin to launch a JBoss Server instance within an Eclipse debug
perspective. The plugin echoes the stdout and stderr of the JBoss instance to the Eclipse
console. This allows you to monitor the JBoss startup and shutdown processes as well as
informational and error messages output by the JBoss instance.

When JBoss starts correctly, you should observe console output that reports the startup status of
all the internal services. You will also notice a number of new threads have been created as
children under for the org.jboss.Main program. org.jboss.Main is the Java startup class
for running JBoss.

Pay close attention to the console output if JBoss fails to startup. The most common reason for
startup failure is the port is already bound to another process. If this is the case, either
reconfigure your JBoss configuration to launch JBoss on a different port or terminate the process
using the specified port, which is most likely a forgotten instance of a prior execution of JBoss.

Figure 4

Copyright © 2002, Genuitec, LLC

Stopping JBoss
To stop the JBoss Server use either the JBoss > Stop JBoss menu action or the red UML
node on the toolbar. When the plugin receives a stop request it gracefully shuts down JBoss
Server. This process usually takes between 5-10 seconds. You can monitor shutdown progress
by observing log information JBoss sends to the Eclipse console. The shutdown process is
complete when the JBoss Server thread group has been terminated.

JBoss 3.0 Alpha/Beta Notes

When launching the default JBoss 3.0 Alpah/Beta (JBoss) configuration from the commandline,
outside of Eclipse, with JDK 1.4, multiple exceptions of the following form will be sent to the
console and recorded in the log.

[2002-02-14 14:22:00,732,ServiceController,ERROR] Could not create MBean:

SingleJBoss:type=J2EEManagement,name=Manager
javax.management.NotCompliantMBeanException: Getter isStateManageable cannot co-exist
with getter getStateManageable
at com.sun.management.jmx.Introspector.testConsistency(Introspector.java:328)
at com.sun.management.jmx.Introspector.introspect(Introspector.java:264)
…
at org.jboss.Main.<init>(Main.java:199)
at org.jboss.Main$1.run(Main.java:411)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at org.jboss.Main.main(Main.java:406)

When JBoss is run with JDK 1.3.1, there are no exceptions recorded. It appears that a couple of
the MBeans that are deployed in the default configuration implement both a “getter” and a
“boolean test” for the state manageable property and this violates the new JDK 1.4 MBean
consistency compliance check. The same behavior can be seen when running JBoss through
Eclipse, but obviously it is not the fault of Eclipse or the plugin.

With proper configuration, JBoss 3.0 can be run with the plugin just as successfully as JBoss
2.4.4. A sample of a configuration of the plugin properties, so they directly mimic the run.bat
script settings, for this version of JBoss is depicted below. However, the VM argument setting,
although currently set in the script, appears to be superfluous.

Copyright © 2002, Genuitec, LLC

Conclusion
If you followed these EASIE JBoss Plugin installation and configuration steps, you should have
no problems starting and stopping JBoss Server from within Eclipse. If problems still persist,
consult the resources section of this article then drop us a note at EASIE support. Until next time,
happy programming.

Resources
• The Eclipse.org website to learn more about the Eclipse IDE.

• See the JBoss website for information on downloading a version of JBoss Server.

• The EASIE JBoss Plugin may be downloaded from the Genuitec website.

• The EASIE Overview introduces the Genuitec EASIE framework for Eclipse application
Server plugins.

Copyright © 2002, Genuitec, LLC